Thread by @thrasherxy

Class time: Let's use the Overton Window to discuss how pagers-as-booby-traps is really bad for humanity, and how journalists are already failing at this basic test of ethics and morality.

The Overton Window was developed to address what topics can be debated, or not, in news media. (It is named for political scientist Joseph Overton, who was not an egomaniac; his colleague Joseph Lehman named it for him after his death.)

For instance, in my lifetime and career, gay rights have gone from being too taboo to write about in almost any mainstream media; now, being explicitly anti-gay isn't much allowed in mainstream media (though, notably, being explicitly anti-transgender IS still on the window).

Our souls take a hit when bad ish comes into the Overton Window. We have seen this happen again & again in Palestine (or. inside what Anthony Lowenstein calls "the Palestine Laboratory") — bombing hospitals, murdering journalists, blowing up babies...it's all became "debatable."

Bombing hospitals, one (in theory, at least) anathema as something to discuss openly, has become debatable. This has terrible consequences for notions of public health and the right to receive medical care in wartime under the Geneva Conventions.

And now, booby traps: the idea that household electronics like cell phone, pagers or radios could be turned en masse into booby trap bombs has entered the Overton Window. This concept will be debated in the pages of th WSJ, NYT, Atlantics and of course on here.

But here's the thing: whether that debate reaffirms the Geneva Convention's prohibition against booby traps (unlikely) or not, we have already lost. Humanity has already lost. Our soul has taken a hit—just by dint of the Overton Window opening up to this debate.

We have now left a world where the Overton Window did not allow for booby trapped cell phones. Hardly anyone but sci fi writers had even thought of a such a thing! Now it's on the table. And having seen the US-Israel, UK and EU just ignore the UN, ICC and ICJ...

we are now seeing these rouge nations/entities ignore the prohibition of booby traps. US-Israel did not just main, ruin or end thousands of lives in Lebanon over the last 24 hours, they blew open the Overton Window into a dangerous, "brave new world"

So rather than booby traps being a non-starter, we will see think pieces asking which KIND of PED bombs are OK, when they can be used and why...under an assumption that they CAN and, if to "prevent terrorism" SHOULD or MUST be used. It's ugly and dangerous.

It's depraved and depressing.

It's demoralizing and grotesque.

It's—and I use this word very sparingly—terrorism. The bombs themselves, and the conversation about the bombs, are effectively sowing terror into not just the people of Lebanon, but...

to sow terror into all the cell phone using people of the world. Because the idea that your cell phone COULD be a bomb—and the idea that maybe it SHOULD be to stop you from being a dissident—has now entered the chat.

Cell-phones-as-booby-traps are no longer "unthinkable"...

And as the late, great @WHarkavy taught me when Trump was emerging on the national scene as a long shot (but firmly inside the Overton Window) presidential candidate circa 2011, nothing good happens when existentially bad ideas come into the fold. We all lose, then.

And the thing is, bobby trap cell phones are a really, existentially awful idea.

But over the last 11 months, we have had more morally depraved ideas stretching the Overton Window ever wider—and each extension has only made the West more coarse, more bellicose, less humane.

We need more beauty, love and light—not more cynical, depraved darkness being debated as practical, legal or just.

This same dynamic is at work with Haitians. When people are asking "Are Haitians eating dogs?" or "Do Haitians really bring AIDS into the US?" Haitians have already lost--ALL of us have lost, simply by these questions being raised!!!

And while it is important them to refute them—I am writing an essay now about AIDS history to deal with some of this—our collective soul has taken a hit BECAUSE the press, Repubs and Dems have ALL primed the pump against Haitians and let this become a topic of debate in the OW.

It is DEPRAVED to see the New York Times, and others, framing the booby trap bombs as a matter of "innovation" and "disruption"

https://x.com/TameeOliveFern/status/1836498423362855137

The ways the OW has been opened in medical debates ALONE is horrific. Is it OK to bomb hospitals? Dress up as patients, go into hospitals and execute patients? Blow up nurses’ pagers? Rather than a strict adherence to Geneva protections of hospitals, all of this is now debatable

https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1836494722669433283

When I was a kid during Gulf War 1/Desert Storm, “smart bombs” came into the OW. The question shifted from “to bomb or not to bomb” to “we are GOING to bomb, it is not question—will they be smart or dumb bombs!?” Now…

we are moving into “of course there will be mass bombing of civilians. Pager bombs are better than 5,000 lb bombs.”